Our Town — St Cyprien

It barely gets a passing mention in the Michelin green guide and no stars at all. Rick Steves doesn’t say a word about it, though he raves about its Dordogne neighbors—Sarlat, La Roque-Gageac, and Beynac. It doesn’t have any great attractions—no museums, no castles, no great cathedrals, no magnificent châteaus, and no prehistoric caves. It does have a very large, rather drab, old abbey. But it’s our town, St. Cyprien, in the heart of the Dordogne.

Safe to say we’ve kind of fallen in love with this place.

What drew us to St. Cyprien was first it’s location—perfect for day trips and outings. And kayaking down the Dordogne.

Two castle/chateaus are within a 15 minute drive—Chateau Beynac and Castlenaud. These two great impressive fortresses sit high up on rock cliffs on opposite sides of the Dordogne River—staring at each other. On the front lines of the Hundred Years War, they changed hands between the English and the French frequently. Brooding Chateau Beynac is part of the story of the great Eleanor of Aquitaine and her son Richard the Lionhearted. Castlenaud offers a fine collection of medieval weaponry and armor, including a number of siege machines. A kilometer or two down the river is the another spectacular chateau, Les Milandes, formerly owned by the Josephine Baker, American dancer and singer, resistance fighter in WWII, and civil rights activist. The chateau is now a museum to her incredible life, complete with many of the costumes she wore in her Paris reviews in the 20’s and 30’s.

Open any guidebook, and you’ll find a dozen more chateaus or castles in the area. But nothing in St Cyprien.

The valley is peppered with insanely cute towns and villages, among the most beautiful in France, most much prettier and more touristed than our St. Cyprien. La Roque-Gageac, Sarlat, Beynac, Rocamadour, St. Leon de Vezere, just to name a few. And the big towns of Bergerac and Perigueux are close by as well.

And the prehistoric sites! If you’re a fan of Neanderthals, cave paintings, and prehistory, this is ground central. There’s Lascaux 4 with its perfectly recreated cave (the Sistine Chapel of prehistoric art), Font de Gaume, the only real cave you can visit with polychrome paintings, and the prehistory museum in Les Eyzies, with its fabulous collection of ancient artifacts. And again, open any guide book, dozens more. Enough to make you an amateur archeologist. St Cyprien has only one cave above the city where it’s hermit and source of the town name once hung out.

The second thing that drew us to St. Cyprien (well, it might have been the first) is the food and the wine. In the Dordogne, fois gras, duck, walnuts, and truffles are the stars on the food side; Montebazillac (sweet Sauterne style white) and Pecharmant (a Bordeaux style red) on the wine side.

And the markets! Every day there is a farmers market somewhere that would put to shame anything we have in the US. We were lucky—one of the best and biggest was the Sunday market in St. Cyprien.

Specialty shops are everywhere. In St. Cyprien, we had several boulangeries, boucheries, a fabulous cheese shop, a wine store, two coffee shops, and one store specializing in fois gras and duck related products— one of the few places where we could buy goose fois gras in Dordogne (most of it is exported). And this is not a tourist town.

Excellent restaurants are nearby—from local pub food to Michelin starred establishments. And the prices are crazy cheap by US standards.

And finally, it’s easy to find beautiful accommodations, particularly if you want to rent a home or villa. It seems every French person or British expat (and there’s lots of those) are renting homes, villas or apartments. We were lucky and found a magnificent house near the abbey.

Walking down the main street of St. Cyprien, particularly on a non market day, you’d think nothing special here. Kinda dull. But spent a few days here or a few weeks as , you get to know a place—the lady at the boulangerie with her preppy “bon jour” every morning, the cats and dogs we see regularly, the rugby practices on a Sunday morning, the pouty waitress at the local bar, and the same locals walking their kids to school everyday. And the out of the way corners of the town with roses and historic timbers.

St. Cyprien—our town.